The BadNo wireless networking; relative power hog compared with the Mac Mini.

The Bottom LineGateway's SX2840-01 remains the budget PC to beat. Its combination of small size, fast performance, and living room competence makes it one of the most flexible desktops on the market. That it has room to upgrade makes the deal that much sweeter. We recommend this desktop to anyone looking for a powerful, versatile low-cost computer.

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Editors' note: This review is part of our , which covers specific fixed configurations of popular systems found in retail stores.

This review was updated February 5, 2010, to indicate that the Core i3 530 CPU is a dual-core CPU that can emulate two additional processing threads, making it a virtual quad-core chip.

We spent the latter half of 2009 raving about Gateway's SX2800-01, a fast, Windows Vista-based slim tower whose Intel Core 2 Quad CPU performance put to shame PCs that cost up to $200 more. Gateway has since updated the various models in the SX28000 series to Windows 7, and with this new $559 SX2840-01, it's added Intel's new mainstream Core i3 quad-core chip. Through some clever chip design, this CPU provides the speed benefits of a dual-core CPU, but can also emulate two extra cores as the workload demands, making it a virtual quad-core CPU. We wish the SX2840-01 came with Wi-Fi, but in terms of offering the most capability for your dollar, Gateway's SX2840-01 has few peers. As with the older model, we recommend this system to anyone shopping for a low-cost PC for productivity or home entertainment.

Take a look around at Gateway's various mainstream slim tower competitors and you'll see no one comes close to the value you get in the SX2840-01. Dell's Inspiron 580s has limited configuration options; HP's Pavilion Slimline s5370t series will cost you more than $800 for a configuration similar to the Gateway; and Lenovo's IdeaCentre Q700 starts at $649 and gets you only an outdated Intel Pentium Dual Core chip. We also checked in with vendors like Shuttle, Maingear, and ZT Systems, and found nothing that challenged the Gateway in size, capabilities, or price. If this absence of competition is what Stan Shih, founder of Gateway-parent Acer, meant when he said, "U.S. computer brands may disappear over the next 20 years," he might have a point.

Gateway SX2840-01

Apple Mac Mini (2.26GHz, 160GB, Fall 2009)

Price

$559

$599

CPU

2.93GHz Intel Core i3-530

2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7550

Memory

6GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM

2GB 1,067 DDR3 SDRAM

Graphics

64MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip

256MB (shared) Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chip

Hard drives

1TB, 7,200rpm

160GB, 7,200rpm

Optical drive

dual-layer DVD burner

dual-layer DVD burner

Networking

Gigabit Ethernet

Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n

Operating system

Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Apple OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2

Indeed, the system most competitive with the Gateway might be from the one U.S.-based vendor best positioned to compete with commodity Windows PCs, and that's Apple's Mac Mini. It lacks an HDMI output, but it does offer wireless networking. We'd rather have HDMI if we had to choose, so the Gateway gets the nod in terms of living room suitability, but the Mac Mini is not without its charms. Its brushed aluminum and white plastic exterior is better looking than the Gateway's all-black enclosure. Further inspection reveals a few more shortcomings on the Apple side, though. The 160GB hard drive in the $599 baseline Mac Mini in particular looks like a joke next to the 1TB drive in the Gateway.

The HDMI output is a key component for the Gateway, because it allows you to connect it easily to any HDTV and serve up video content from the Web or via the Gateway's DVD drive. With the Mac Mini you need to buy a separate mini-DVI-to-HDMI adapter. We were happy to find that the Gateway scaled properly to a TV set to 1080p output, and also that it transmitted sound over its HDMI cable with no trouble. It's also robust enough to handle video from YouTube, Hulu, and NetFlix smoothly, and it also successfully played back an HD movie trailer from Apple's online trailer repository. The Mac Mini was equally capable, but Dell's Inspiron Zino HD and its lower-end hardware faltered on Hulu and the HD trailer tests.

We're actually happy to see that the Gateway isn't quite so far ahead of its Windows-based budget competition this time around in terms of performance. We're not surprised that it blew past the Dell Zino, given that system's low-power dual-core AMD CPU, but the full-power quad-core AMD Athlon II X4 630 in the HP Pavilion p6310y gives the Gateway and its Core i3 CPU some real competition throughout our benchmarks. Yes, that HP is a $599 midtower, so you'd expect it to outperform the tiny Gateway. But the last time we reviewed an SX2800-series slim tower it regularly outperformed budget PCs that cost up to $200 more. That the HP remains competitive suggests that the budget PC market perhaps won't be as dismal this year as it was in 2009. It also argues that for multicore and multitasking workloads, true quad-core CPUs may still provide some advantages over the Core i3's virtual quad-core design, but any gap, especially among systems in this price range, will likely remain a small one. We expect you'll find the SX2840-01 well suited to any typical consumer-level task.

The Gateway SX2840-01 features a wide array of front panel inputs.

In addition to the HDMI video output, the Gateway also offers a fairly flexible set of connectivity options inside and out. As pictured above, you get five USB 2.0 ports on the front, along with a media card reader, audio jacks, and a mini FireWire input. Around back you'll find four more USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet jack, an eSATA port, a set of 7.1 audio inputs, an optical S/PDIF audio input, and a VGA video out. Short of a full-size FireWire jack, there's little else we'd ask from a budget desktop's external connection options.